How to Talk about Data: Build your Data Fluency

This book enables you to speak competently about data with others - whether data specialists or people with a modest data literacy - to make sense of it and apply it to decisions at hand. Having read this book, you will have acquired a skill called data fluency.

Data fluency refers to the ability to talk competently, clearly, and critically about data with others by having grasped the key concepts of analytics (including the statistical terms and procedures behind it) and knowing how to apply them in organizational settings.

The premise of this book is that data fluency has become an essential business skill for anyone and that this skill can be learned. A second, related premise is that deep understanding comes from good communication: Good communication can help us get the most value out of data and assess its quality better – thus ultimately enabling us to make better, more informed decisions. Communicating with data is a skill that anyone can use, whether you are a business leader, a non-profit manager, a project coordinator, or a functional specialist.

The book contains vital advice for managers 1) when making sense of data and 2) when communicating data-based insights. It makes statistics concepts easily accessible and instructs readers how to ask the right questions about data, tell captivating stories about data, visualize data clearly, or how to handle data disagreemetns constructively. We will use real-life examples from both for-profit and nonprofit contexts to illustrate the concepts we present. This will facilitate knowledge transfer and help the readers relate the book to their own daily business. In doing so, we build on several years of experience conducting analytics trainings for managers and analysts in the US, UK, India, Slovakia, Switzerland, Germany, South Africa, and many others.

Check out the table of contents:

Introduction: Your Guide to Data Fluency

Part I: Understanding Data

1. How to Improve your Data Fluency

2. Making Sense of Statistics

3. Modeling the World with Data

4. Understanding Complex Relationships

5. Segmenting the World

6. Detecting Data Distortions

Part II: Communicating Data

1. Asking the Right Questions about Data

2. How to Visually Design your Data

3. The Data Storytelling Canvas (Five Magic Ingredients of Data Storytelling)

4. Working with Analytics Software in Front of Others

5. Delivering Bad News with Data

6. Handling Data Disagreements

What’s Next: Sustaining your Data Fluency

References

The book is available on Amazon.
Click here to purchase.

Eppler, M. J., & Bünzli, F. (2022). How to Talk about Data: Build your Data Fluency. Harlow, Essex, UK: Financial Times Publishing International (Pearson).